


a working thing

by Skvaader



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, M/M, if borrowing your sister's baby for a while counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28277238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skvaader/pseuds/Skvaader
Summary: Then there is Katja and Hedy and an emergency “I promise Erik, it’s only for a couple of hours they just need me to help with the store because nobody understands how the system works,” and Nicky peers at Erik and his sister from the kitchen door. Hedy’s chubby hands curls around the thick wool of his sweater.Nicky and Erik takes care of a his niece.
Relationships: Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	a working thing

**Author's Note:**

> A late exchange fic for leahlisabeth on tumblr!
> 
> I chose accidental baby acquisition of any kind. I don't actually know much about child care, but toddlers aren't supposed to be out in the snow for more than 30 minutes at the time apparently.

It happens like this:

Erik and Nicky are preparing for Christmas, the Klose house a small steep house built high and narrow out of red bricks: It has a homely feeling to it, only amped up with the garlands and the decorations that has taken over most of the nooks in the house. There’s a smell of spices hanging in the air and earlier on Erik’s father and him had dug out benches in the garden packing snow hard enough to sit on and then placed sheepskin over it. There’s a fire pit in the middle and Nicky thinks fondly of the sweet pear drink heated on it filled with cognac that Erik’s sister would make. 

Then there is Katja and Hedy and an emergency “I promise Erik, it’s only for a couple of hours they just need me to help with the store because nobody understands how the system works,” and Nicky peers at Erik and his sister from the kitchen door. Hedy’s chubby hands curls around the thick wool of his sweater. 

She’s a tiny little thing, golden curls and deep brown eyes staring up at him. He’s met her before, last Christmas she was even tinier and her smile has more teeth this time. Nicky hitches her up a little bit higher on his hip as Katja throws on her jacket, comes back up to Nicky to leave a kiss on Hedy’s curls.

“Thank you so much, Nicky,” she says with a smile and Nicky has always loved that smile, just set in a different face. 

“It’s no problem really,” he says easily. It’s really not. 

Then she’s gone in a sweep of the door and snow trying to push into the hall with the accompanying wind. Erik turns around to give Nicky a bemused smile, “Well, I guess we will have to find another time to finish this up,” he says and makes a sweep at the last of the decorations. There’s enough to spill over the kitchen table together with wrappings and threads. It’s such a huge difference from the spare lights Nicky used to set up in Columbia years ago. Andrew would peer at him from the porch while smoking until they went inside. It was nice though, because they would have hot chocolate afterwards with peppermint cream. 

“So what should we do?” 

He doesn’t really know much about children, young children at least, the twins having come to him already far older than what their ages said. Even with the thickness of the sweater Nicky can feel Erik’s heat when he comes and stands beside him arm curling seamlessly around Nicky and slotting them together, Hedy gives a little happy noise when Erik pinches her nose. 

“We could take her out? It’s going to be a lot of sound and things happening here as soon as mom comes back with the others,” Erik says thoughtfully, “There’s the sleds in the shed behind the house.” 

“Can she be outside in this cold?” Nicky says, he gives Hedy a concerned glance, getting a wet hand to his chin in response. Hedy smiles and babbles, she still hasn't said her first words but Katja doesn’t seem worried and Nicky doesn’t really know when children are supposed to start talking. 

“Yeah, if you dress her up properly and not for very long. We’ll just take her to the slope around the block.” 

Nicky goes through the basket with Hedy’s clothes, finding her overall and thick mittens. Erik disappears into the kitchen boiling black currant cordial and stacking the sandwiches they had for lunch earlier with some clementines and rice cakes. She keeps staring at Nicky as he puts on her clothing, the overall and the boots and the gloves, everything to keep her pink and soft skin from the wind and the cold. 

“You are very cute,” Nicky smiles, gives her cheek a raspberry that has her shrieking with laughter and patting the mittens against his cheek. 

Their own clothes are more easy to put on but they have to change Hedy from Nicky to Erik when she grows fussy being placed down for the short time it takes to armour up against the cold. The Klose house sits in a nice suburb with more green areas around it than Nicky’s ever seen growing up and Erik pumps through the snow that’s piled into the garden for a path to the brown little shed in the back containing gardening tools mostly. It takes a couple of pulls before the snow will move away from the door and he can take out a big wooden sled from inside, flashing a victorious smile at Nicky who cheers. It has Hedy watching him again, bright eyes and he wonders if most children are like this, wonders if the twins were ever like this. 

“You can put her in the sled,” Erik says, putting it down together with a sheep skin that he packs her into shoes and all. 

Nicky takes the line and follows after Erik as he choses a direction, an apparent goal in mind. 

*

“We used to go to this place with my father,” Erik says, there’s snow caught in his eyelashes and in the beard he had jokingly said he would grow two months ago and then actually did. 

Hedy giggles behind them as Nicky drags her over a bump and his shoulders are already smarting.

“People can skate on the lake if it freezes, but mostly we went there because the slope is nice.” 

Nicky doesn’t really have any memories like that with his father. He remembers a strong voice, the paraffin of a bible with pages so thin that Nicky was afraid of breaking it. Luther would read it for him, and then when Nicky was old enough he would read it himself. 

“I never learned how to skate, there wasn't much snow around or ice,” Nicky says, there’s a jovial smile on his lips and Erik presses a thumb against it. 

“I could teach you.”

“Would you stop me from falling?” 

Erik’s smile is huge, “I’m always here to catch you.”

*

Erik would most likely stop Nicky from falling, if he could, if he wanted to. That doesn’t stop Nicky from falling on the slope as he runs after the sled and the tinker bell laughs as he drags Hedy up up, and then pushes her down and rushes after the sled until it arrives at Erik’s feet. 

He falls still, gets snow in his nose and on his cheeks and it’s cold enough to feel like it would cut. His teeth hurt when he laughs and there’s warm hands pulling up into a strong embrace and Nicky thinks of Atlas that carried the world because Nicky would trust Erik to carry him over and over. 

“I think it is time for us to get a bit warmer.”

Nicky peers at Erik, gets his cheeks rubbed red as Erik uses his gloves to push the snow away from him. 

“You’re volunteering to keep me warm?” 

It earns him a kiss on the cheek, searing hot and if he wouldn’t already know the bowed shape of them he wouldn’t mind having them branded into his skin to linger. 

*

Hedy sits on his lap and eats the mushed up rice cakes that Nicky feeds her, her nose is going pink and her hands are curled around the reflex he has attached to his pocket tugging at it. It keeps taking her attention away from the rice cakes, she’s already spit out around five bites onto his jacket that Erik plucks off without a thought. 

It’s easy. He does it as he pours up hot cordial into cups for them, capable hands opening the sandwiches and Nicky never thought he would get to the point where he thought a man opening foil would make him think of the word capable. But Erik has gentle hands, strong fingers from climbing and he never ceases to amaze Nicky. 

There’s a thought that has started niggling Nicky in the back of his head. The way Hedy sits on his lap, kicking out at his belly with a gurgle, still tugging at the reflex close to her mouth like she wants to swallow it. The way Erik reaches over and smoothes her hair out of the way at the same time he kisses Nicky on the cheek again. Nicky pries the reflex out of her hands as he looks at Erik, accepting the cup holding it out of Hedy’s reach. 

They have a house together now, two rings and a place to call home. Nicky makes breakfast for them while Erik packs their lunchboxes, in the evening they cook dinner together if they can, if they have the energy for it. Erik laughs when Nicky burns the food (“Shut up I’ve been cooking food for teenagers for years, they live on pasta”) and Nicky laughs when Erik oversalts it. 

(Andrew would eat pasta, would tear it apart into tiny pieces and separate it to its components until he could neatly see what was on his plate. Aaron would eat it piece by tiny piece, ate it like it sat as stones in his belly.) 

“Do you think we could have children?” Nicky says, voice quiet, throat thick. 

*

When Nicky had left Germany, left what he thought was a home the only thing he could think about was Aaron. His little cousin with a sour face that would look at him with dark eyes, but then there would be that tooth gapped smile as Nicky snuck him caramels after dinner. Cheeks dusty from cinnamon and sugar evidence from the donuts you could buy in town and Nicky had always been weak for that smile. Maybe he had always been weak for children. 

He had thought about his father, who didn’t want him in his house anymore and the church with it’s coloured windows. He had thought about Aaron and his brother having to grow up in a house where bile stung in your throat and you covered and you hid yourself, you took the parts that were soft and yearning, put them in a box and never let anyone see them. It wasn’t a house that he could let them grow up in but Luther had said that he couldn’t raise children. 

Then Erik smiles at him with a befuddled smile, hand still curved around Hedy’s skull large and kind. Nicky has never brought up children before, it had been on the tip of his tongue sometimes, the idea before he swallowed it down. But they have a house and jobs, they have savings and Hedy is tiny in Nicky’s lap and there’s a balloon swelling inside of Nicky’s ribs.

“Would you want children?” Erik says. 

“I’m,” Nicky swallows, and Erik presses a thumb against his cheek because there’s the jovial smile caught on Nicky’s face again. A reminder that he doesn’t have to smile to placate, that there’s no reason to hide from Erik and isn’t it funny that Nicky’s family is so good at hiding behind smiles, “Am I allowed?”

He doesn’t dare look at Erik, instead staring down at Hedy who seems to have caught up with the mood. She curls her hand around Nicky’s dark fingers. 

“Nicky,” Erik says so softly, “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you?”

A brittle laugh escapes Nicky, caught in his throat before it’s allowed to spill out. It has Hedy frowning and Nicky hushes her. 

“I didn’t exactly do a great job raising children before.” 

There had been a fight, when Nicky had left. Not out of anger but fear and worry, because Erik didn’t think he should go home, didn’t want him close to his father or his mother. There had been resigned silence when Nicky told him he would stay. The twins had always been a hard subject between them, not because of hatred either but from how Erik knew Nicky let love ruin him so easily.

“I don’t think I can speak for them,” Erik says thoughtfully, “I don’t think anyone can speak for them, but I don’t think that is true and I think they would say the same thing.” 

There’s phone calls now, from time to time, there’s a scheduled zoom call later today because they’re coming here for Christmas. The Kloses and Minyards, dragging Neil and Ketelyn and Kevin with them in their wake. There are birthday greetings sent and visits when they have time, they’re ever growing. And Nicky is so so proud of them. But he doesn’t think he ever did a good job raising them, they took themselves where they are now all by themselves. 

*

There’s a promise on the tip of Nicky’s tongue spoken to his curls, to the curve of his skull underneath skin. To the tiny vessels of blood like spider web across his scalp so it could be carried to his heart and nestle there. There’s a promise made on his mother’s tongue spoken in his father’s voice, “ _ You will be made better”.  _ And Nicky was made better, but not from psalms and singing and rendering himself nothing, not from cutting parts of himself until he thought that they were heavy enough they had their own gravity. Nicky was made better the day a man smiled at him. Nicky was made better when he held his palm against Erik’s like the unity in a prayer only it was the two of them and Nicky was smiling, crying, laughing. 

Hedy clings to him staring at the screen of the computer as the call tries to connect fascinated with the blue dots. She needs to nap soon but for now she had decided to attach herself to him, curling up against his chest leeching off his warmth. They had come back a bit earlier, cheeks rosy and noses numb, heading home once Hedy started to get grumpy, face growing blotchy from the idea of tears. She hadn’t stopped fussing until Nicky lifted her up and swayed carefully, softly murmuring against her hair as he bounced her. 

Katja hadn’t minded that Nicky kept her in his lap, busy in the kitchen that wafted of newly baked bread and gingerbread. So Hedy sits in his lap and watches the dots spin around telling them that the call is going through. 

Andrew is the first to connect to the call, face blank with the background showing the kitchen of his apartment, Nicky having been there enough times to recognize the soft blue cabinets and the open spice rack besides the stove. There aren’t any decorations put up, won’t be any as Neil wants to finish celebrating Chanukah before they take the plane over to Germany and Nicky assumes that somewhere there’s a menorah. Andrew never cared to put up decorations before, but Nicky has seen him carefully wrap the menorah up to put it away for next year and Neil will make them latkes and hot chocolate with peppermint cream either way.

“Hello, Andrew,” Nicky says, “This is Hedy.”

Andrew’s eyes are already on the toddler. 

"Did you steal a child?"

“Of course not, she’s Erik’s niece.” Nicky says, “Just looking after her.”

Andrew hums, poking at something off screen but eyes still caught on her while Nicky is not sure she’s aware about more than the moving images that Andrew makes as he continues with what is possibly a crossword if Nicky would guess. 

“Tell me about your day,” Andrew says.

It’s somewhere in the middle of that when Aaron finally appears on the other screen, looking stressed and exhausted. Holiday seasons always seem to drag the weirdest of people into the hospitals and he has been working over time to be able to actually leave for Germany as planned. It makes a smile bubble up on Nicky’s face, fingers curling around Hedy’s locks. 

It means a lot that they care enough to try this for him and it’s what finally has him lick his lips and carefully speak.

“Erik and I have been talking about maybe adopting?”

“Is that a question?” Andrew says, eyes lifting from the crossword, flickering to something else off screen. Potentially Neil or perhaps Kevin depending on what time of the day it is over there. 

“No, I meant just,” Nicky bites his lips and it comes out quiet, “do you think I should adopt?”

Nicky knows his cousins weigh words carefully, that they are immersible to count. Calculates loss by the velocity of the words leaving their lips. Nicky sometimes wonders how they can be made out of the same flesh, breath the same air and be carried by the same bones and not understand each other. 

But they’re getting better. Both Aaron and Andrew stare at him from the screen, Andrew stops fiddling with the pen and Aaron opens his eyes from where he has been rubbing them raw. They must know why he’s asking them, why it’s so important for him to know what they think but it doesn’t stop the lump from forming in his throat. From the fear of hatred or disgust, or that unavoidable void Andrew puts out when you do not matter to him.

“Does it matter?” Andrew is the first to say.

“Of course it does, they would be your family then,” Nicky says (siblings, cousin, niece, whatever word this child would fit in this family), “But I don’t want to adopt if you think I’m unfit to do so.”

He knows that Erik doesn’t agree, doesn’t care if the twins would say no. That Erik is thinking of his own answer and whatever he gives will be theirs to do what they want with, just the two of them. But Nicky needs to know because he failed in so many ways, tried to push when he shouldn’t and pulled away when it mattered. 

“Yeah Nicky I think you should if you wanted to,” Aaron says carefully, fingers wringing together and looking away. Nicky can see that this is not a conversation he wanted to have, or perhaps he simply wasn’t prepared for it. 

The inside of his lips has grown fleshy and raw from biting it, taste a bit like iron when he pokes it with his tongue, “I’m just worried, of fucking up as a parent again.”

He sees the way they both go still for a moment, weights the words again in their head, weights the word parent because no matter what Nicky thinks it’s not a word that the twins use lightly. That it isn’t something positive and a guardian or cousin is a shape they understand. 

“You were there, weren’t you? You’re still here,” Andrew says. 

“But I don’t know if it was enough for you, if I would be enough for this.”

Anger flashes in Andrew’s eyes, hot and heavy, “Don’t assume what is enough for me. I didn’t expect anything and yet you tried. Self-pity doesn’t look good on you and a child will be happy as long as you care.”

It has Nicky giving a wobbly smile, it isn’t nearly enough to encompass the whole of how they had functioned for so many years before they started trying to put together their frying edges.

“Would you come and visit them?” Nicky asks.

“Of course.” Andrew scoffs and Aaron nods, slow and complatingly. There’s words he still haven’t said, that he doesn’t open his mouth to say before Andrew has ended his call (After Nicky asks him yet again “When will you arrive?” “The date hasn’t changed, look in your inbox if you need to know,” Andrew answers as he ends the call.)

Aaron looks at him, this boy that Nicky has known for so long and then he sets his jaw, “You did good you now.”

He sighs, looks away once more but it seems important to him that Nicky hears what he says because he catches his eyes again. Leans forward until he’s no longer sprawled back on the couch, like it will make them closer than the ocean between them currently. 

“You weren’t a bad guardian Nicky, I think that there weren’t a lot of rights you could have done, that I didn’t let you and neither did Andrew.”

“Oh.”

Aaron laughs, quietly and with a sneer on his lips that would be ugly but Nicky loves him more than anything, “Yeah, you weren’t bad Nicky, I don’t think many other people would have given us as many chances as you did.” 

*

Hedy sits with Katja on the other side of the fire, bundled up once more in sheepskins and blankets sleeping against her mother’s chest as Katja accepts the heated pear cider she’s given. It has Nicky smiling, hiding it against Erik’s throat making his beard tickle his nose. He’s warm, arm around Nicky’s shoulder and the other curled around Nicky’s fingers pressing against the ring there. He hasn’t given an answer yet, hasn’t put together how a child would slot in their lives but he’s thinking about it and it’s something they’re allowed.


End file.
